A Bachelor's Comedy

“Jimmy must do as he’s told,” said Mrs. Simpson, then, grasping the pudgy little hand firmly, she held it out to the housekeeper.

“I’m sure I’ve no wish – ” began Mrs. Jebb, with trembling stateliness, when Andy cast aside the mantle of the senior curate, grabbed Mrs. Jebb’s hand in his own, and pushed the bony fingers of his lady-cook-housekeeper towards Jimmy.

“I say,” he exclaimed boyishly, “you can’t refuse to shake hands with a little chap like that!”

Mrs. Jebb felt the touch of the firm, young fingers on her wrist, weakened, advanced a step, finally ‘eye-cornered’ Andy with a tremulous smile and waggled once the fat hand of Master Simpson.

“I’m sure,” she said, “I’ve no wish to be un-neighbourly, Mrs. Simpson. It was just seeing you there on your knees rubbing the sideboard front when I never expected to see anything but the cat or Mr. Deane. I ought to be able to enter into a widow’s feelings if anybody ever could. With Mr. Jebb I was not merely a wife, I was an obsession.”

“With all my wordly goods I thee endow, of course,” quoted Mrs. Simpson vaguely, in whose mind the words possession and obsession had somehow run together and produced a blurred impression of Mrs. Jebb’s meaning. But she saw Andy was anxious for peace, and gratitude for the sideboard gradually overcoming her anger, she wished to do her part.

“Two widows living near together should be on good terms,” said Mrs. Jebb, her annoyance also cooling, while prudence dictated a course obviously pleasing to Andy. “Will you step into my room and have a cup of tea? I am no breakfast-eater, and generally take one at eleven. And” – she concluded the amend generously, “Jimmy shall have a biscuit with pink sugar on the top.”

That settled it; for Jimmy was so fond of eating that he would have accompanied the sweep – his idea of the embodiment of evil – to search for biscuits with pink sugar on them.

So the baize door of the study banged in the rear of an amicable trio while Andy sat down and mopped his brow. It was difficult to catch evolution by the tail after that – he seemed to have gone so far from it. But he knitted his brow, shook his fountain-pen, and started on the quest.

One thought, however, would creep in and out of the books of reference and between the written words – it was not so easy as it looked, to live in a place where everybody was so inextricably mixed up with everybody else. And later in the day he was to have another striking proof of this queer inter-independence of which a townsman knows so little. For when he walked past the Petches’ cottage he beheld the Attertons’ landau, drawn by a sleek and fat pair of horses and driven by a sleek and fat coachman, standing in front of the little gate. Elizabeth Atterton and an ample lady in grey occupied the carriage, and they were inspecting a parrot in a cage, which Mrs. Petch rested on the step.

“I trust,” said Mrs. Atterton, “that William is in good health. He looks” – she paused – “he looks far from well, Emma.”

“Moulting, ’m,” said Mrs. Petch. “That’s all.”

“But this is not the season for moulting,” objected Elizabeth.

“Ah,” said Mrs. Petch, with an easy smile, “but William always was different to other birds. Scores and hundreds of times I’ve heard my poor mistress say so.”

“Well, it was a remark my poor aunt often made,” said Mrs. Atterton, eyeing the dejected attitude and naked chest of the parrot doubtfully.

“I’m sure you give him every attention. You would, of course, when your annuity dies with him. My poor aunt no doubt felt that.” She paused again, and added in answer to Mrs. Petch’s look of wounded innocence, “Of course, you would in any case. I do not forget what a devoted maid you were to poor Aunt Arabella.”

“She trusted me with William,” said Mrs. Petch simply, applying the corner of her apron to her eye.

“I know. I was not reflecting on you in any way, of course, Emma,” said Mrs. Atterton kindly. “Only, I promised to see after William sometimes, and I like to do it. Poor William! Of course, one can’t expect him to live for ever.”

“Parrots sometimes live to be a hundred,” said Mrs. Petch quickly. “Sam read that in the paper only the other day, ’m.”

“Well, we’ll hope William may,” said Mrs. Atterton comfortably. “I never liked him, even in his best days, but I don’t want him to die.”

There was a reposeful kindness about Mrs. Atterton that seemed exactly like that of her daughter Elizabeth – and yet, in its essence it was altogether different.

“Good afternoon, sir,” said Mrs. Petch, long before Andy reached the group. She greeted him with such alacrity, indeed, that an enemy might have thought she welcomed the interruption to the interview with William.

“Oh, mamma, here is Mr. Deane. Mr. Deane, you haven’t met my mother?” said Elizabeth, who was, for some foolish and obscure reason, a little nervous.

“No – er – I am very glad – that is – I am sorry – at least, I mean to say I am delighted to meet you now,” said Andy, who, for some equally foolish and obscure reason, was nervous too.

Mrs. Atterton beamed placidly on him.

“Sorry I did not see you when you called, Mr. Deane, but it was one of my bad days. My back – ” She paused, as if that explained all, and Andy filled in the blank with a sympathetic —

“Of course. I’m afraid you are a great sufferer.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Atterton pleasantly, “it is not that I have any great pain, but I collapse. Don’t I, Elizabeth?”

“Mamma is so patient,” said Elizabeth, with loving sincerity. “She hates to make us feel – ”

“Come, come, come! Bring that cup of tea! Bring that cup of tea!” interrupted William, croaking hideously.

“Poor Aunt Arabella! Couldn’t you fancy you heard her voice from the grave?” murmured Mrs. Atterton, shedding an easy tear.

“William belonged to my great-aunt, Mr. Deane,” explained Elizabeth.

Then it swept over Andy again with renewed force, how everybody here was connected in some way with everybody else. He had always known in a general way, of course, as we all do, that if you slip on a banana skin and use expressions better left unemployed you may influence some one for evil in central China – but he had never before come near enough to the principle to be able to see the working of it with the naked eye.

“I thought when I first came to Gaythorpe that William was a person,” said Andy, noticing the pink nails of Elizabeth’s ungloved hand upon the carriage door.

“Well, poor Aunt Arabella always did say he had an immortal soul – and you never know,” said Mrs. Atterton, willing to give everything created the benefit of the doubt.

Then the fat coachman, who was tired of waiting, made one of his fat charges stamp idly on the ground in a perfunctory manner, and Mrs. Atterton said the horses were growing restive and it was time to go.

“So glad we are to see you on Thursday evening,” she said, over her shoulder. “Good-bye, Mr. Deane. Good afternoon, Emma. Let me know how William is, please.”

The farewells of Andy and Elizabeth were somehow merged in the salutations of Mrs. Atterton, and the responses of Mrs. Petch, but they looked at each other just as the carriage went off with a direct glance which held more than either of them could yet understand of young hope and joy and question.

“What was it?” that look said. They didn’t know – they didn’t know – only something glorious!

Andy stood staring after the carriage until at last Mrs. Petch’s voice from behind penetrated his understanding.

“Cars are all very well,” she said, “but there is a something about a carriage and pair – however, they own motor-cars – it isn’t that.”

Andy understood that the wealth and standing of the Atterton family were being defended, and replied at once —

“Of course. All the same, I can’t understand when you have a Limousine – ”

“Mrs. Atterton’s back won’t stand motor-cars,” said Mrs. Petch gravely, but if so perfectly behaved a gardener’s wife could have ever winked, Andy would have said she winked then. However, he felt the light must have dazzled his eyes.

“Quite so,” he said. “It is a great affliction.”

“Yes, sir. It is, indeed,” responded Mrs. Petch at once. “Everything in life, as you may say, and yet a back to spoil it all.”

“There’s always – er – something,” said Andy, feeling he ought to improve the occasion.

“There is, indeed,” sighed Mrs. Petch, with a sort of serious cheerfulness. “No rose without a thorn in this world, sir, and we can’t expect any different. We should never want to go to another if we’d everything we wanted here.”

“Nice, right-thinking woman!” reflected Andy, as he went up the road.

He was on his way to visit a woman called old Mrs. Werrit, an obscure connection of the Werrit family who had drifted near them again in her extreme old age, and Andy had been told that day that she was dying. But he was ready enough to help any old person to die, just as he was ready to help any young one to live, and he went up some crooked stairs to the bedroom, full of confidence in himself and his office.

For some time the old woman said nothing in response to his remarks, and allowed a daughter of Mrs. Will Werrit’s to answer for her. Maggie Werrit felt rather glad that her aged relative was not in a talkative mood because she lacked that polish which the best boarding-school in Bardwell had imparted to the latest generation of the family, and the new Vicar would look down on them all if he heard one of them talk about ‘ankerchers.’

“I hope you don’t suffer much?” said Andy, sitting down beside the bed.

Then Mrs. Werrit opened her eyes, and he was surprised to find how full of life they were in that sunken, dull old face.

“I did suffer,” she said, “but that’s over now,” and she shut her eyes again.

Andy took out his little book and prepared to read, when Mrs. Werrit looked at him once more.

“The others are all gone first,” she said. “Every one of us six but me.”

“I’m sorry,” said Andy, very gently.

“You needn’t be,” said old Mrs. Werrit. “It doesn’t matter now.” She paused, and added after a moment, “You’ll find out – all that matters at the very end – is how near you’ve gotten to God in your life.”

Then she closed her eyes again, and Andy shut his little book and put it in his pocket without a word, and crept reverently down the crooked stairs as if he were leaving the presence of some one very great.

When he was far down the village street, and too far from the little house to go back again, he realised that, for the first time in his professional career, he had failed in his ministration to the aged poor. He fingered his little book, feeling inclined to go back again, and all the way home something within him smarted and burned underneath his wandering thoughts.

Youth knows nothing more unpleasant than those secret growing pains of the soul of which it does not understand the meaning.

Perhaps it was these – or it might have been the dull evening after a day of clouds and storms – anyway, Andy felt driven forth after supper to tramp restlessly up and down the garden path by the churchyard hedge. Had he chosen the right life? Was he fitted for a country parson?

New and perplexing doubts of himself began to assail him for the first time as he tramped up and down, casting a glance at Brother Gulielmus every now and then over the churchyard hedge.

Had he tramped up and down here too? For the garden dated back to that time, though the house was modern. Had he wondered and felt restless too?

But gradually the regular motion quieted Andy’s nerves, and he began to notice how the crimson rambler had grown, and to feel the freshness of the dew-laden air.

Then, quite suddenly, for no reason at all, he remembered with wonderful vividness how Elizabeth’s hand had looked upon the door of the carriage. His mental picture of her face was indistinct, but her hand seemed painted on the summer darkness, and he felt an intense longing to take it in his own.

That was all he wanted – so exquisite a thing is the first beginning of young love.

“Mr. Deane! Mr. Deane! Will you have eggs and bacon for breakfast, or the rest of the cold ham?” shrilled Mrs. Jebb from the doorstep.

“Oh, just as you like. I’ve told you so before,” said Andy.

“But I like to consult your tastes,” said Mrs. Jebb pathetically.

“Eggs and bacon, then,” said Andy.

“It’s damp under foot,” said Mrs. Jebb. Then something in the woman’s voice and look as she tried to keep him there for company struck home to Andy’s perceptions, and he suddenly realised that she might be dull and lonely too.

“I say – it’s awfully good of you to bother about my tastes like that. You mustn’t think I don’t appreciate it,” he said eagerly. “Those gooseberry dumplings we’ve been having are fine.”

“Now Mr. Jebb couldn’t assimilate boiled paste at any price,” began Mrs. Jebb, delighted.

So Andy listened to her for quarter of an hour and then went back to the path by the churchyard hedge and that dream which Mrs. Jebb had interrupted.

Or perhaps it was scarcely a dream as yet – only the indescribably delicate stuff of which dreams are made.

Gradually, however, the quietness of all about Andy seemed to fit in with his misty memories of Elizabeth. Tenderness. Sweetness. Repose. Why – those meant Elizabeth – they were but other names for her.

Words gathered in his mind, singing of themselves about her sweetness. The nightingale in a little wood half a mile away was no more singing to his mate than Andy there, beneath the churchyard hedge.

Only, the nightingale’s song was lovely for every one, and Andy’s could never be lovely for any one but Elizabeth.

He pictured them, hand in hand, there in the garden together, watching the village as it went to sleep.

“Let us watch the quiet villageTill each little casement glowsFor there’s something in the sight, Love,That is like a heart’s repose.Let us watch the starlight glimmerThrough the windless evening air,For there’s something in your eyes, Love,That is like a star at prayer.Let us watch – ”

“Beg pardon, sir. Didn’t see you. Churchyard’s chortesh way home for me,” said Sam Petch, blundering through the gate in the hedge. “Beautiful night, sir.”

Sam was not uproariously drunk, but he was affably so, and took no notice of Andy’s frigid —

“I will speak with you in the morning, Petch. Go home at once.”

“Sho I will, sir. Sho I will,” said Sam heartily. “An’thing to oblige. Good-night, sir.” He paused, then looked back and said pleasantly, “Had a bit o’ bad luck on my way home, sir. Wife sent me for sixpennoth o’ brandy for her spasms, and I’ve broke the bottle. I suppose you haven’t a drop you could – ”

“No,” said Andy sternly. “Go home.”

“Of course, sir. Of course. No offence taken and none meant,” said Sam, moving off. He paused again and added solemnly, “It’s a great relief to me, after the way our poor late Vicar went on, to find you don’t keep no spirits in the house, sir. A great relief it is. Good-night.”

CHAPTER VI

When Andy went into the garden next morning he buckled on tight the mantle of the senior curate and advanced across the grass to where Sam Petch was bending over a flower-bed with an air of decent contrition. No skulking behind bushes for him – he prodded dismally for all the world to see.

Andy, in spite of himself, felt slightly mollified, but he had made up his mind to say a certain thing, and he said it.

“This state of things cannot continue. You bring discredit on my profession, my parish, and myself.”

There – that was it – just as the senior curate would have put it; Andy took hold of his coat lapel, coughed, and waited – just as the senior curate would have done.

It is one of those facts about human nature which cannot be explained, that while Andy disliked the senior curate exceedingly, and had groaned under his oppressive rule, he strove to imitate that gentleman. Perhaps he unconsciously wanted people to be as much impressed by him as he had been by the senior curate.

Anyway, Sam Petch appeared to be greatly impressed by the dignified rebuke.

“I own I’d had a drop too much,” he said repentantly. “But Bill Shaw drank five times what I did and never turned a hair. It shows how unfair things is, sir.”

“If a little makes you drunk you must refrain from that little,” said Andy, severely.

“I know,” acknowledged Sam. “But it is hard when a man can’t take his mug o’ beer with the rest without getting what you might call jolly; isn’t it, sir?”

“After all – what is a mug of beer?” argued Andy. “I’m not a total abstainer myself, but I will become one if you will.”

Sam’s potations of the previous night still hung about him sufficiently to make him very irritable, and he suddenly lost control of his temper.

“It’s all very well talking like that,” he said. “You, who don’t care whether you ever have another drink or not – what do you know about it? Give up the thing you like best and then I’ll do the same.”

Andy looked at the man, and the mantle of the senior curate was blown away in the blast of truth that swept across him. He even forgot to notice the disrespectfulness of Sam’s manner as that wind burst open a closed chamber in his mind and he saw farther than he had ever done before.

“All right,” he said simply. “I like” – he sought for his preference – “I like butter best of anything – always did, as a little kid – I’ll give up that.”

“I’ll give up beer, then,” agreed Sam Petch; but he made certain mental reservations of which Andy, naturally, could know nothing. Every man had a right to beer on a Saturday night, of course; that was the privilege of a British working-man which was above and beyond all other agreements.

Then Andy went back into the house with a complete sense of failure dogging his footsteps. It was a ridiculous and undignified thing to do, to make a compact of that nature with a drunken gardener. He ought to have insisted in a dignified manner upon instant reform or instant dismissal.

“Mrs. Jebb,” he said, looking in at the kitchen door, “please do not send butter into the room with my meals. I shall not be taking any for some time.”

“What? No butter?” said Mrs. Jebb. “Are you bilious? Well, I know towards the last Mr. Jebb never could – ”

“And I am dining out to-night,” continued Andy, who was particularly disinclined, just then, for Mr. Jebb.

“How convenient! I mean, how strange!” said Mrs. Jebb. “I was just about to ask if you would have any objection to my going over to Millsby Hall this evening.”

“Why – are you invited too?” said Andy, very much astonished. “I mean, there’s no reason why you should not be dining with the Attertons, only I hadn’t heard – ”

“Once a lady always a lady, of course,” replied Mrs. Jebb, smoothing her lace cravat. “But the conventions of life are such that, as lady-cook-housekeeper, I neither am, nor expect to be, bidden to Mrs. Atterton’s table. I was referring to the Long Night.”

She gave to the two last words such a melancholy emphasis that Andy had a vague idea, for the moment, that she was in some new way referring to the demise of Mr. Jebb.

“The long night?” he echoed stupidly.

“I mean the final evening of the Parish Dancing Class,” said Mrs. Jebb, “which Mr. and Miss Fanny Kirke have pressed me to attend.”

“Of course,” said Andy. “I’d forgotten. It is to be held at Millsby Hall, of course, so that Mrs. Atterton may see the final practice of the country dances for the Garden Fête next week.”

“Mr. and Miss Kirke told me in confidence,” added Mrs. Jebb, with an indescribable air of being ‘in the know,’ “that Mrs. Atterton’s back would not permit of her coming to the village schoolroom.”

“Ah,” said Andy, to whom even the back of the Beloved’s mamma was sacred. “Well, go, by all means, Mrs. Jebb. I expect I shall see you dancing like a girl.”

“My girlhood’s days are over,” sighed Mrs. Jebb. “But” – she cheered up – “married ladies are very popular in ballrooms now, I understand. The gentlemen seem to like mature conversation combined with their dancing. And I do not intend to refuse. I think it neither Christian nor right, Mr. Deane, for a widow to make a suttee of herself.”

“Of course not,” agreed Andy absently. “Well – no butter – you quite understand?”

“Trust me,” said Mrs. Jebb effusively, “to understand a gentleman’s inside. For months before he died, Mr. Jebb – ”

Andy departed, and the recording angel put it down to the right side of his everlasting account that he did not say, “Damn Mr. Jebb.”

The day seemed long, and the afternoon appeared to stretch out interminably until the hour when Andy could adorn himself in a new clerical dress-suit which he now thanked the aunt and cousins in Birmingham for insisting upon; thus arrayed, he surveyed his newly plastered curls in the looking-glass, and felt that, though severely freckled and rather short than otherwise, he was the right thing.

He stepped jauntily in the cool of the evening past Brother Gulielmus asleep, and never gave him a thought, only wondering if he had buckled his braces high enough, or if his trousers were, after all, a shade too long. He paused behind the yew at the corner to adjust matters, and gazed down at his legs with a keen preoccupation that left no room for anything else.

He felt it was such an immensely important thing that Elizabeth should see him with his trousers exactly the right length, and he was very much startled to hear a voice behind him saying tentatively —

“Excuse me – as a married lady – perhaps I might oblige with a safety-pin – ”

Mrs. Jebb again! – taking the air in the congenial neighbourhood of the tombstones.

Not daring to trust himself to speech, Andy shook his head and marched out of the churchyard. He began to hate Mrs. Jebb.

But when he came in sight of Millsby Hall he forgot all about her, and approached with beating pulses the extremely ugly, modern house which sheltered the lady of his dreams. It had been built by Mr. Atterton’s father after he developed from a small county landowner into the owner of a watering-place. Marshaven, previously to 1850, had been the resort of fishermen and waterfowl only; now it was crowded from June to September with train-loads of trippers from all over the country, and Mr. Atterton found the joy and interest of his existence in supervising the erection of ever-new rows of red-brick villas, and in putting his finger into every pie which the town council of that prosperous resort made for the purpose of attracting visitors.

“I believe we’ve got that matter arranged with the Bandmaster,” he said, rubbing his hands energetically as he entered his drawing-room that evening. “I did think for a time that the situation looked serious, but I approached him informally at first, and then officially, as the Chairman of the ‘Amusements Committee,’ and I think the crisis is over.” He paused, and smiled with satisfaction at his assembled family. “I’m glad to have my mind free for the Promenade question – that will take some engineering – but of one thing I am absolutely determined,” – he hit one hand on the other – “I will not

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